SE: Hodge Hitting Senior Indoor Season with High Expectations
Jan 09, 2020 | Track & Field, Sports Extra
By Corbin McGuire
Travis Hodge came into K-State track and field expecting it to be like high school.
Not in terms of the level runners he knew he would face; Hodge is smarter than that — he's currently studying for the MCAT and, if all works to plan, he'll be a surgeon in the future.
No, Hodge anticipated his career playing out like the one he left at DeSoto High School. In short, start small and finish big.
"Freshman and sophomore year, you're not super competitive and by the time you're a junior and senior, you can start really contributing. That's kind of what happened to me in high school," Hodge, who set the school and state meet record as a senior in the 1,600-meter and 800-meter run, said. "That's kind of what I expected coming in here. There's a lot of really good athletes in the NCAA, in the Big 12. So, I figured freshman and sophomore year would be a little rough, I wouldn't be contributing a whole lot and then junior and senior year I'd start really getting some high places."
Hodge has followed his expectations, almost to a T.
A senior for this indoor season and junior for outdoor — he redshirted last outdoor season — Hodge has scored four times, individually, in his six career Big 12 meets, including in three in a row. At last year's Big 12 Indoor Championship, he finished third in the 1,000-meter run. He ran the program's ninth-fastest time (2:26.11) in prelims to make the finals. He performed at the level he aspired to when he first got to K-State.
"It was always the dream. It's always been the goal, so hopefully we can get some more of those this year," Hodge said, as K-State track and field competes at the Jim Green Invitational on Friday and Saturday in Lexington, Kentucky. "That's the goal."
Hodge already knocked out one goal this season. He broke the meet record in the mile at the K-State Winter Invitational in December. His time of 4:11.54 bested an 11-year mark set by Michael Pierce.
"It was pretty cool," Hodge said of the start to the season. "I ran that time (in February of 2018), so it's kind of cool that we're already running that fast in December. It feels good. Hopefully that means we can expect big things coming since we're already running that fast. It's always cool to break a meet record. My name's going to be on that now for the future, so that's kind of cool. We knew the time going in and we figured we were fit enough to beat it, so we were kind of shooting for that."
Getting to this point, Hodge said, required some adjustments early on at K-State. Some of them, he expected. One, in particular, he did not.
"I think one of the big things is running with teammates that are so fast. In high school I was leading everything. I didn't have to really worry about other people. Then, you get to college and I'm running with guys who are just as fast as me, if not faster, and it was a little bit of a shock at first," he said. "It almost felt like a race in practice. Then, you just have to realize that these are your teammates, you're trying to work together. Once you figure that out, everything meshes really well, and you can kind of work off each other and help each other out."
The curveball? Hodge, who only grew up about 100 miles east of Manhattan, never dealt with allergies before he moved to Manhattan. As a freshman K-State, he faced troubles breathing normally and felt sick constantly.
"I would go to the doctor and I wasn't sick. Then, they were, like, 'Maybe you have allergies, something here that's not back home,'" Hodge, now on allergy medications, said. "I didn't get it figured out until the spring of freshman year. You didn't think that would be a problem."
One moment that Hodge said helped springboard his career took place about a year after he got his allergies figured out.
As a sophomore, Hodge said he was ranked around 12th or 13th in the 800-meter run going into the Big 12 Outdoor Championship. Still, K-State cross country head coach/distance coach Ryun Godfrey wanted to enter Hodge into the race. Hodge finished eighth in the prelims, the second-to-last qualifying spot for finals. There, he broke his personal-best time by two seconds to finish fifth.
"That's when it first kind of clicked for me," he said. "You never really know what's going to happen. People who are way faster than you can have a bad race and you can have a good race. That was my first big contribution to the team. The coaches were pretty happy about it."
To end his last indoor season with similar satisfaction, Hodge said he hopes to match or better his third-place finish in the 1,000-meter run at the Big 12 Indoor Championship in Ames, Iowa from February 28-29.
"Obviously, it's been a dream to win a Big 12 Championship and it's my last indoor season, so hopefully we can get as close to that as possible. I think we have a good team this year, too. Some of us have been talking since like April last year that I think we'd have a pretty good chance, hopefully, this indoor season to try to do something as a team," Hodge said. "As close to a team title and as close to an individual title would be the coolest goals. Then, again, just getting faster, trying to make some top 10 lists, stuff like that would be pretty cool to end the season."
Travis Hodge came into K-State track and field expecting it to be like high school.
Not in terms of the level runners he knew he would face; Hodge is smarter than that — he's currently studying for the MCAT and, if all works to plan, he'll be a surgeon in the future.
No, Hodge anticipated his career playing out like the one he left at DeSoto High School. In short, start small and finish big.
"Freshman and sophomore year, you're not super competitive and by the time you're a junior and senior, you can start really contributing. That's kind of what happened to me in high school," Hodge, who set the school and state meet record as a senior in the 1,600-meter and 800-meter run, said. "That's kind of what I expected coming in here. There's a lot of really good athletes in the NCAA, in the Big 12. So, I figured freshman and sophomore year would be a little rough, I wouldn't be contributing a whole lot and then junior and senior year I'd start really getting some high places."
Hodge has followed his expectations, almost to a T.
A senior for this indoor season and junior for outdoor — he redshirted last outdoor season — Hodge has scored four times, individually, in his six career Big 12 meets, including in three in a row. At last year's Big 12 Indoor Championship, he finished third in the 1,000-meter run. He ran the program's ninth-fastest time (2:26.11) in prelims to make the finals. He performed at the level he aspired to when he first got to K-State.
"It was always the dream. It's always been the goal, so hopefully we can get some more of those this year," Hodge said, as K-State track and field competes at the Jim Green Invitational on Friday and Saturday in Lexington, Kentucky. "That's the goal."
Hodge already knocked out one goal this season. He broke the meet record in the mile at the K-State Winter Invitational in December. His time of 4:11.54 bested an 11-year mark set by Michael Pierce.
"It was pretty cool," Hodge said of the start to the season. "I ran that time (in February of 2018), so it's kind of cool that we're already running that fast in December. It feels good. Hopefully that means we can expect big things coming since we're already running that fast. It's always cool to break a meet record. My name's going to be on that now for the future, so that's kind of cool. We knew the time going in and we figured we were fit enough to beat it, so we were kind of shooting for that."
Getting to this point, Hodge said, required some adjustments early on at K-State. Some of them, he expected. One, in particular, he did not.
"I think one of the big things is running with teammates that are so fast. In high school I was leading everything. I didn't have to really worry about other people. Then, you get to college and I'm running with guys who are just as fast as me, if not faster, and it was a little bit of a shock at first," he said. "It almost felt like a race in practice. Then, you just have to realize that these are your teammates, you're trying to work together. Once you figure that out, everything meshes really well, and you can kind of work off each other and help each other out."
The curveball? Hodge, who only grew up about 100 miles east of Manhattan, never dealt with allergies before he moved to Manhattan. As a freshman K-State, he faced troubles breathing normally and felt sick constantly.
"I would go to the doctor and I wasn't sick. Then, they were, like, 'Maybe you have allergies, something here that's not back home,'" Hodge, now on allergy medications, said. "I didn't get it figured out until the spring of freshman year. You didn't think that would be a problem."
One moment that Hodge said helped springboard his career took place about a year after he got his allergies figured out.
As a sophomore, Hodge said he was ranked around 12th or 13th in the 800-meter run going into the Big 12 Outdoor Championship. Still, K-State cross country head coach/distance coach Ryun Godfrey wanted to enter Hodge into the race. Hodge finished eighth in the prelims, the second-to-last qualifying spot for finals. There, he broke his personal-best time by two seconds to finish fifth.
"That's when it first kind of clicked for me," he said. "You never really know what's going to happen. People who are way faster than you can have a bad race and you can have a good race. That was my first big contribution to the team. The coaches were pretty happy about it."
To end his last indoor season with similar satisfaction, Hodge said he hopes to match or better his third-place finish in the 1,000-meter run at the Big 12 Indoor Championship in Ames, Iowa from February 28-29.
"Obviously, it's been a dream to win a Big 12 Championship and it's my last indoor season, so hopefully we can get as close to that as possible. I think we have a good team this year, too. Some of us have been talking since like April last year that I think we'd have a pretty good chance, hopefully, this indoor season to try to do something as a team," Hodge said. "As close to a team title and as close to an individual title would be the coolest goals. Then, again, just getting faster, trying to make some top 10 lists, stuff like that would be pretty cool to end the season."
Players Mentioned
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